Earth Art: Surreal Images of the Planet Like You’ve Never Seen It Before

Early images of Earth from space redefined our relationship with the planet, making us realize in an instant how incredible, precious and fragile our co-existence truly is.

And yet, in comparison with today’s satellite technology, these images were primitive, only revealing the splendor of our world in a very general way.

Fast forward from 1972, when the era-defining ‘Blue Marble’ image of Earth was first broadcast, to today, where the planet is encircled by a proverbial jungle of high-powered satellites, constantly monitoring and photographing every square inch of the planet with unbelievably sensitive and precise instrumentation. Following this logic, one would expect images of the planet shot with today’s satellites to be hundreds of times more profound.

While it is hard to quantify these types of things, the following images, which were shot by European Space Agency satellites over the last decade, offer a fresh perspective on Earth’s stunning natural beauty and our delicate co-existence that is powerful enough to fuel an entirely new generation of conscious activists to reconsider how we view and relate to the planet we call home.

This false color Landsat-5 image from 4 May 2012 shows agricultural structures in the US state of Kansas. photo: USGS/ESA

The Tibesti Mountains, located mostly in Chad with the northern slopes extending into Libya, are captured in this Envisat image. photo: ESA

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Deep in the Sahara Desert, the Al Jawf oasis in southeastern Libya is pictured in this image from Japan’s ALOS satellite. photo: JAXA/ESA

Phytoplankton bloom stretches across the Barents Sea off the coast of Cape Nordkinn photo: ESA

This image from the Envisat satellite shows the Juruá River snaking through the Amazon rainforest in western Brazil. photo: ESA

Small, blocky shapes of towns, fields, and pastures surround the graceful swirls and whorls of the Mississippi River. Countless oxbow lakes and cutoffs accompany the meandering river south of Memphis, Tennessee, on the border between Arkansas and Mississippi, USA photo: USGS

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